agenbite

Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

n. remorse, ayenbite, often used as a conscious archaism

Etymologies

Modern spelling of ayenbite reflecting Old English agēn ("again, eft, back"). (Wiktionary)

Examples

Anyway, the most obvious distinction is that the sociopath would presumably remove the implant if he could, while most of us would not want to anaesthetise the agenbite of inwit, if this were somehow possible.

Those machines have faded in power, but the Irish have remained a major presence, with about 37 million Americans claiming some degree of Irish descent and tens of millions more claiming some form of social kinship, even if it is just an agenbite of inwit.

"Let's coin a term for this kind of poetic, extralogical accuracy. Let's call it agenbite. That's a word Michael of Northgate cobbled up for his 1340 Remorse of Conscience — or Agenbite of Inwit, as he actually titled the book. English would later settle on the French-born word "remorse" to carry the sense of the Latin re-mordere, "to bite again." But Michael didn't know that at the time, and so he simply translated the word's parts: again-bite or (in the muddle of early English spelling) agenbite.

"Anyway, these words that sound true need some kind of name. And since they do bite back on themselves, like a snake swallowing its tail, Michael's term will do as well as any other. Ethereal is an agenbite, isn't it? All ethereal and airy. Rapier, swashbuckler, erstwhile, obfuscate, spume — agenbites, every one. Reverberation reverberates, and jingle jingles. A friend insists that machination is a word that tells you all about its Machiavellian self, and surely sporadic is a clean agenbite, with something patchy and intermittent in the taste as you say it."